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Friday, 29 August 2014

Phew! What a day! Having a new kitchen installed and the guy from the company fitting it came round to finalize measurements and accessory choices! How many different types of tap are there? And did I want a one bowl, 2 bowl, one-and-a-half bowl sink, swan-neck, mono-block, mixer taps with or without water filter, and don't get me started on door handles!! Best make some decisions soon!

You know the little watermark I have on my photos? Well, tonight the app that I use to put that on my photos decided now was a good time to play up! Grrrr. It was working so well up to now. Had to go and hunt out a new one!!

And then I had issues with taking a photo of glitter! Oh the life I lead! All sorted now though thanks to some help from good friends and I love the new watermarking app thingy I found!

For my Friday Feature I am bringing you a colourful little card I made using the oh so popular paint product, Brushos. Now I won't claim they are new as they have been around for quite some time. They are however new to me and boy have I had fun playing with them! They make the most amazing backgrounds for the Visible Image INKognito stamps. I have a big stash of ready made backgrounds now!

So? What do you think? As you can see I have used the INKognito butterfly stamp as the main feature for this card. I stamped and then glazed the butterflies with some good old Diamond Glaze. I bought several bottles when they were on half price from my local craft shop and that was about 10 years ago!

For me the Brushos are a hit and there are many ways to use them. They are basically just water colour paint in powder form, but they are really versatile and when sprinkled onto wet card they do the most amazing things! A perfect match for the amazing Visible Image stamps!

You will be seeing a lot more of the Brushos from me in the coming weeks as they are my current best friend! Keep an eye out for the new challenge starting on Monday. I have used them on my inspiration piece but in a very dramatic colourway!

Here is the shopping list for the stamps I used in this project. Click the image to link directly to the online shop.

Before I leave you, have you seen the sneaky peeks of the NEW stamps from Visible Image? They are really special. You will need to go to either the Visible Image web site - HERE or the Facebook group page - HERE to see what I am talking about!

Join the Facebook group or sign up to the newsletter to be the first to hear about new releases, you know it makes sense!

Only a couple of days left of the August challenge, details are HERE, but if you miss this one then why not take part in the September challenge.

OK, I'm off to see the Wizard! No, I am off to my cave to get creative again! See you soon.

Monday, 25 August 2014

Seem to have forgotten it is a Bank Holiday, I have no concept of time now that I am retired and living in such a peaceful part of Wales. Nothing reminds me of the day or time other than it being light or dark!

This week I have decided to show you what can be made with some very basic materials and of course the lovely English Country Garden stamps from Creative Expressions.

This is very much a Back-to-Basics project. 3 key ingredients; card, embossing ink and powder along with a stamp and an embossing folder.

After my foray into embossed embossing last week with the blog-hop card, I thought it might be nice to do something similar albeit on a lesser scale. Let me tell you what I did.

Next I pressed the bumpy side of the embossed card onto the inky acrylic block. I pressed just firmly enough to get some embossing ink onto the raised areas. This worked better than running the ink pad over the card like I did last week! I suppose it depends on the effect you are going for.

Next I sprinkled some of the lovely Gold Cosmic Shimmer detail embossing powder over the card, tapped off the excess and heat set it. Any areas that are a little lacking in gold can be repeated. The old saying you can add but not take away should be remembered at this stage! Build up the amount of gold you want gradually. Ink again and again if necessary to achieve your preferred level of gold-ness. For me this card was all about less-is-more.

I stamped 3 images onto some more card and embossed them with the same powder. The stamp I used was the Rose Entwined.

Because I didn't have any gold card of exactly the same colour, I cut my mount from white card and then inked around the edges to a width of about 5mm with embossing ink. You could use an embossing ink pen for more accuracy. Then I applied the gold embossing powder and heat set it. The width that needs embossing depends on the size of the mount you make and you only need to emboss the minimum amount. It is nice when all the golds are the same colour I think.

I made a banner using the Happy Days sentiment from the Desert Daisies set. It worked well as I wanted a ribbon sentiment rather than a tag type and did the same thing as before for the gold mount.

All in all a simple but very effective make. Ideal for a wedding.

Going back to basics provides a welcome change from the complex, highly decorative cards and projects the experienced and well-equipped crafters make. It encourages those new to crafting to have a go. Styles vary, fashions come and go but you each know what you like, what your skills are and who you are making your card or gift for. I was a long time into my crafting journey before I used a rubber stamp and then quite some time after that that I used embossing powder. We all start somewhere and the best way to progress is to master a technique before confusing yourself with multiple layers, assorted techniques and a myriad of paints, powders and inks!

Hope you enjoyed the project this week and that you will be back next week when I will be unveiling a new set of projects made with new Festive products from Sue Wilson!

Friday, 22 August 2014

Hello followers! Here we are again with the Friday Feature. Hope you all had a good week?

As you know I have recently moved and I needed a little note board and somewhere to hang my keys. I also wanted something to hold letters that needed posting. I was getting frustrated because I would pop into town to get something and then realise I left the letters that needed posting on the table! I was thinking a shelf by the front door, with some hooks for keys and a cork board to pin things onto.

Well, I didn't need any of that in the end! I found a great functional piece in my local supermarket that ticked all the above boxes, it was a good price but it wasn't the prettiest looking thing on the planet. Now, some may like the original but it really didn't suit me. So I went about altering it, and I am thrilled with the end result!

So here it is before I transformed it using Visible Image stamps.

And here it is after.

And here it is 'in use'

I used the lovely INKognito Flower and Bronte stamps.

Hope you like the transformation?

I would like to remind you about the Visible Image Facebook group - HERE

Wednesday, 20 August 2014

Firstly, everyone at Creative Expressions would like to thank all of you who took part over the past few days - we've all enjoyed it and hope that you have too. There have certainly been many positive comments along the way, and it seems that everyone has been able to take a little bit of inspiration away with them, which is great news!

My Hop make - Peace on Earth

I personally would like to thank all of my visitors and I hope that you will come back more often to see what I am doing.

To my new followers, I post every week for Creative Expressions on a Monday. The spot has been affectionately named The Monday Make. I am still showcasing the lovely English Country Garden stamps, but it won't be long to wait for a whole new theme! I received my new goodies today and I am blown away! Can't wait to start sharing my makes with you!

Current theme - English Country Garden

Anyway, back to the winners! All of the winners have now been chosen, so here is the list of lucky people who will each be sent a selection of Creative Expressions goodies! Simply send an email to Tracey with your full postal address and she will send your prize out to you!

Monday, 18 August 2014

I first need to welcome all my new followers and thank all of you that visited me during the blog-hop! I am overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who have visited me! Thank you!

Hope you managed to do the August Creative Expressions blog-hop that started on Friday? If you didn't do it HERE is the link for the start page. Follow the blogs from the links in each page, leave a comment and be in with a chance to win a fabby prize! It doesn't close till Tuesday 19th at 5pm so plenty of time yet.

Today I am showing a little home decor item. I had temporarily called it the Daisy Dangler and this title seems to have stuck! Officially the stamp is a sunflower but somehow I couldn't find a suitable rhyme for that!

I started by colouring a piece of card using blue/purple tones from the Cosmic Shimmer Water colours, Pastel shades. I wasn't going for a solid all-over colour, I wanted there to be some shading and visual 'texture' with brush strokes showing. I left this to dry completely. Important as the next stage involved heat embossing.

I made a cube from another piece of card. I measured the size of the stamped image and based my cube on this. Before I glued up the edges I made sure I added some ribbon to opposing corners. One corner has a loop for hanging from and the other has a ribbon tassel.

I then cut each stamped image and the sentiment out and glued one to each side. I was careful to get the images and the sentiment the right way up.

Friday, 15 August 2014

Friday once more and therefore another project featuring the wonderful stamps from Visible Image. I am still totally smitten with the latest stamp realease. Called INKognito, they are the most inspiring and unique stamps I have seen in a long time.

Flowering Moments

Rather strangely for me, I have taken a liking to the flower stamp. Yes, of course there is a butterfly which I was expecting to be my #1 choice but I really do like this gerbera daisy flower.

I wanted to create something subtle and elegant. I think this card captures the mood I was hoping for. What a lovely wedding card this would make! If you knew the colour theme for the wedding you could make the card using those colours.

Anyway, I hit upon this idea of overlaying rather than masking (I defy anyone to cut a mask for these stamps!) when I was trying out some new-to-me ink pads. I noticed that the inks were very translucent when stamped having accidentally stamped the purple over the grey on a scrap piece of paper. The idea developed when I found a third colour in the inks that was complementary and lighter, namely the parchment colour.

I took a piece of A3 white card and simply stamped a row of purple flowers then a grey row and then a cream row. Within each row i made sure the flowers were close but not overlapping. With the second row I stamped in the places between the purple flowers and the cream row was pretty much a copy of the purple row.

Finding a nice section, I cut the piece to size, added a ribbon and the sentiment, mounted on some purple and grey card stock and hey presto!

I am actually tempted to dash off now and make another card in a different colourway. If you are new to stamping this card is really quite simple although it looks complicated. If you have trouble with colours then look at something that you have in your home that has 3 colours, maybe a rug, the curtains, the wallpaper, a vase, your favourite item of clothing and see what colours there are on there.

Hopefully you got here from Tracey's blog but, if you didn't, go to Creative Expressions News Blog! to get to the starting point. The journey through the blogs will hopefully inspire you and there is the chance to win a fabby prize along the way!

Peace on Earth

These new Christmas designs from the Singles Range at Creative Expressions, include seven different stamps. As you will see from the various samples made by the Design Team for the Blog Hop, they do not just have to be used as they are but can be altered and interchanged to give lots of different options.

One randomly selected person commenting on this blog post before the closing date will win the following fabulous prize, which includes some of the new stamp designs.

This is the prize - comment on my blog and you could win this!

For my project, I used the Peace on Earth stamp set along with some of the pretty pearly swirls.

The image was then cut out and mounted onto Foundations White card stock with a 'barely-there' amount of white card showing. The borders on the stamp itself are quite narrow so I made my white mount about the same.

Next I moved on to the background for the card. This was a voyage of discovery! I am going to use this technique again! I took a piece of the same Cobalt card and ran it through the embossing machine using a small patterned embossing folder. I used the Spellbinder M-Bossabilities Simplicity folder.

I intended to only gloss the tops of the embossing but got a little carried away and ended up clear embossing over the whole thing! You could do either. Just swipe the embossing ink 'carefully' over the raised areas! I was a little heavy handed and was using a brand new ink pad! But the end result was pretty cool I think. I used Cosmic Shimmer Detail Clear. I cut the card down to suit the size of the white embossed stamped image.

The shiny blue background card was then stuck onto the card base with Cosmic Shimmer Glue (boy how I L-O-V-E this glue!!). I left it to dry under some thing heavy to make sure the embossed card stuck truly flat. The CS glue is perfect for this sort of job but a little bit of weight just helped with the now very thick card especially at the corners!

The main white image was then stuck to the base card. I used white card as before and kept the border to a minimum again.

Shiny! Use your pearls exactly how you want.Cut them to fit.

To finish I used a variety of bits from the Creative Expressions self adhesive swirls in pearl. Now being the frugal crafter that I am, and because you can, I cut the swirls to suit the space. I will have used some left over bits from other projects and cut into some new ones to get the coverage I wanted. It is hard for me to say what I used exactly but you can be quite 'clever' with these self adhesive pearls.

So there we have it, a pretty little card featuring these new fantastic stamps. Hope you have enjoyed my blog today. I will be back on Monday with my Monday Make for Creative Expressions.

Thank you for visiting my blog, please leave a comment below in order to be in with a chance of winning a prize!

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

Hello! Just a quick pop in and out, I have a mountain of things to do, all of them important and many that need to be done a.s.a.p!

This time on MOO-MANIA the theme is Texture and I have chosen to use some embossed card which I added some silver gilding wax to. This emphasizes the raised areas. I added some faux gems and some lovely metallic thread as extra textures.

When I was preparing for the photo, I thought that I would add even more texture with the backing paper and used some snakeskin textured black card. Right, enough! I need to do other things.

Monday, 11 August 2014

Boy do the days go quickly here in Wales!! Seems like I have barely hit 'publish' and it is Monday all over again!

Today sees the second blog using these fantastic new 'English country garden feel' stamps from Creative Expressions. I have used a pretty stamp, Anemone Planter, this time with the 'With Love Always' sentiment from the Rose Entwined set. I know, I have mixed my image and sentiments up again but they do all work together really well.

I first coloured a piece of white card with Tim Holtz Distress inks. I used my favourite colours. Peeled Paint and Faded Jeans. I applied the ink with a brayer by smearing the ink pads onto an acrylic block, one colour at each side and picking the ink up from there with the brayer.

Then with some careful splattering of water, not too much, and dabbing off with a piece of kitchen towel I added some visual 'texture' to the flat brayered colours.

Using just a slightly damp brush I picked up some of the colour left on the acrylic block and coloured the flowers. leaves and borders. I stuck with blue for the flowers, green for the leaves and used the best match for the borders. Quick run around the edges, again with the most appropriate Distress ink, after rounding off the bottom corners and the main feature is complete!

Mounted on to a piece of blue card with the bottom corners also rounded off and job done!

A very simple card and hopefully you think this is a very pretty card. I certainly like the result I achieved and it does show off the stamps well I am sure you will agree.

Hope you come back for more next week? Any questions or comments will be gratefully received.

Friday, 8 August 2014

Whoop whoop! Another Friday is upon us and thus another Friday Feature is here for you!

The guys at Visible Image have just come back from a very scorchio holiday, they had a great time but are back now in the thick of it with a show to go to this weekend. Boy they never seem to rest those two! I bet they were talking 'shop' even while they were away!

Which show you ask? The Great British Craft Festival – Stoneleigh Park, near Coventry, is my answer. Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th August. They are on stand D3. If you can, pop over and say 'Hi' to Helen and Mark. They will be the ones with the gorgeous suntans!

If you are lucky enough to be going then you will see some amazing samples the DT made using the latest stamp release, INKognito. They are fan-tab-u-lous, and I am not just saying that 'cos I am on the team! These stamps are really beautiful and lend themselves to a variety of styles, but are particularly good for those of you that like journalling.

Right, my project for today features the heart and the Live Life Now sentiment.

I used a new-to-me product, Dylusions ink sprays (only got mine 2 weeks ago, I know lots of you have been using them for ages!) for the background and gilding flakes for the stamped images. Word of warning, be very careful not to let the gilding glue dry on the stamps. This goes for ANY stamps, Visible Image stamps are pretty robust, but the gilding glue is not designed for use on stamps really and it does dry pretty quickly. It would mess up your rubber stamps too if left on there. But don't be frightened of using it. Just apply some glue to a flat surface, I use an acrylic block, (again wash quickly after use) and pick up the glue with the stamp just as if you were inking it up. Then stamp and leave to go tacky, apply the gilding flakes and voila!

Hope you like it?

Make sure you check out the Facebook group - HERE, the Web site - HERE and the Monthly Challenge - HERE. Be in with a chance to win £20 worth of stamps of your choice by simply entering a project made using a Visible Image stamp.

Comments are nice to read, now that you are here perhaps you want to leave one? Thank you!

Monday, 4 August 2014

Start of a new week and I hope it goes a lot better for me than last week! Suffice to say I have a new heat gun, a repaired Cuttlebug and a new printer. Why? Well all three items decided to break last week.

Today sees the start of a new month of makes with Creative Expressions and some new stamps. These are a lovely set featuring English country garden flowers and some lovely sentiments.

I have chosen to show you a project I made using the Sunflower Delight stamp. At the time of being given the stamps to work with it was still unclear which sentiment would go with which flower so I opted for the Happy Days wording from the Desert Daisies set.

Triple Sunflower card

I also used an older stamp for the background, Botanical Spray. It is the one I used for the Gilded Box, such a versatile stamp.

The colouring was done using the pastel set of Cosmic Shimmer Watercolour paints. This set is a beautiful collection of colours reminiscent of an ice cream parlour! But looking at the project these colours don't need to be pale and quiet! Look how they shout out, all zingy and zesty!

First I took a piece of plain A3 white card and coloured it in a loose rainbow style with the paints. Remember my old mantra about colouring more than you need so you have spare should you need it but also so that you can choose your favourite areas.

Once this was completely dry, yes it has to be bone dry, I stamped and embossed the sunflower 3 times using black embossing powder. I tried to get a good cross-section of colours in the background. I cut these out and mounted them on a 'barely-there' black card mount.

Next I stamped and embossed the remaining card using the Botanical Spray and clear embossing powder.

To make the background more interesting I then re-painted the colours over the top of the clear embossing. The trick was to not be precise about matching the colours but to allow some overlapping of colours so if you look at these close up shots you can see where the under colour is showing through the second coat. So for example where the undercoat was yellow blending into green I allowed the second coat to be more of the green blending into the blue.

Does that make sense? I can feel a step-by-step coming on.......

For the sentiment I stamped and embossed in black along an off-cut of the card.

All in all this is a pretty little card, full of colour and sunshine!

Hope you like my project, please feel free to leave a comment and if you have any questions please ask!

A little later than usual due to the holidays, the new monthly challenge goes live at Visible Image today. Why not take a look at the other DT projects over on the blog to get your creative ideas flowing.

My make is a little different this time, I have decorated some candles using the More than Words set/Thank You and the Bronte Script. I find decorated candles a really useful stand-by gift for those moments when you don't quite know what to get for somebody, or for when somebody needs a gift quick, like the neighbour who looked after your cat, or when you are asked to donate a prize to the school fete.

They are decorated using stamped tissue paper which is then heat welded onto the candle. Ah! You thought because the Visible Image stamps are flexible that I wrapped the inky stamp around the candle. Tried that, the ink won't stick!

Of course you need to be careful with candles when lit. They will burn as normal, but I would still treat them with the respect they deserve. Lit candles should never be left unattended.

I will take my Health and Safety hat off now.....but I needed to say it. Thanks for bearing with me! To be honest most decorated candles will stay unlit as they are more of a home decor item than a practical one, but they do still 'work' after being decorated.

So, pop over to the Visible Image blog - HERE - and follow the link to the August Challenge area. Or go to the Facebook Group - HERE - to see the DT inspirations and upload your entry. It always amazes me how differently we interpret the stamps!

Friday, 1 August 2014

A few days ago my husband and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. Naturally I made him a little something.

Just thought you might like to see it now that it is safe! He thinks it is fantastic and I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

I used glitter, yep, I know, not something that I use often but this was Cosmic Shimmer Sparkle Texture paste. I actually really like the effect it created tone on tone. I think I may be converted!

I first covered an MDF heart with some crimson card and then spread the texture past on through a mask. When it had dried I used some gilding was around the edges of the heart and then gently applied some to the surface of the glitter paste. I have no idea who made the stamp I used but it is one of my older wooden mounted ones which I have kept because it is such a nice font and a lovely sentiment. I added some suitably romantic charms and ribbon to hang it.

Of course there is a personal sentiment written on the back but that is between me and my OH!

Really? Friday already! Where has this week gone? On the plus side, it does mean I get to share with you my Friday Feature!

This week I have made a very simple card using one of the new, what do you mean you didn't know? Yes, NEW stamps from Visible Image.

I am very partial to butterflies as you know, but this gerbera-like flower is gradually making its' way up there into my Top 5 favourite Visible Image stamps.

Using only 2 colours, other than the white of course, I would say this is a CAS card but some of you might not agree. At what point does a Clean and Simple card become not a CAS card I wonder? I shall ponder that thought later.

I stamped the flower four times onto a piece of white card leaving plenty of space for cropping. I then cut them out deliberately avoiding having the centre of the flower in the middle of the square. I played around with the position of them until I was happy and then stuck them onto a piece of pink card. I then cut a piece of white card to the same width as the new square and stamped 2 more flower heads. Once again I stamped them to be 'off the page'. Using a navy ink I stamped the sentiment directly over the flowers on this panel. I decorated each of the 4 flowers with a navy gem and mounted the whole thing onto navy card before putting onto a white card blank. So there it is, what else can I say about it?

The only thing left for you to do is to pop over to the Visible Image web site and check out all the other fantastic DT samples, and maybe you will be inspired to have a go yourself at making something fantastic. You could enter it into the monthly challenge and be in with a chance to win some Visible Image stamps.

There is also the Facebook group which is a great place to meet like-minded stampers, get to hear about all the latest products, and chat with us guys at Visible Image.

I for one am hoping that today is a 'good' day as I have had a couple of craft-room disasters. First my heat gun broke. I am not prepared to play around with electrical tools so I have had to order a new one which is going to take 3-5 working days to get to me. Living in rural Wales isn't all good you know! Then my darling little Cuttlebug decided to throw a cog! Yes, I have a Grand Calibur but that is too big to be heaved on and off the desk. Now this I was happy to try and fix. A few screws and Bingo! She is working again! Now they do day that things come in threes.........fingers crossed for today then! I just better not go near my Scan'n'Cut hey.